Time to reassess DPS vehicle pursuit policy
On Nov. 7, I attended a community town hall meeting on issues related to awareness of smuggling of undocumented immigrants.
I asked a question of DPS Regional Director Joe Sanchez related to the issue of the dramatic rise in law enforcement vehicle pursuits in recent months, almost exclusively involving Texas DPS troopers.
I made it clear that I appeared as a concerned citizen, a member of this community with a family and relatives who comprise the motoring public in El Paso.
Of the three vehicle pursuit policy models in law enforcement, which include: Discouraging, Discretionary and Restrictive., Sanchez acknowledged the DPS policy to be the discretionary policy in El Paso.
I discussed studies and policy papers of the Department of Justice — Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, distributed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — as well as other research and policy recommendations sponsored by the Department of Justice.
The DOJ publication include recommendations that police pursuits should adopt the restrictive policy model.
This model, adopted by many municipalities across the country, places certain restrictions on officer’s judgments and decisions.
One DOJ publication includes many recommendations on police pursuits to include agencies adopting restrictive vehicle pursuit philosophies limited to a serious set of circumstances and that permits pursuits only for violent crimes and where failure to immediately apprehend the suspect represents an imminent threat to the public.
The following day there was another crash in El Paso resulting from a DPS pursuit. It’s past time to reassess.
Eduardo Solis, Downtown El Paso